Another Life t-1

by Peter Anghelides

  ‘Strap me in,’ he said to her. She hesitated. ‘Do it.’

  Gwen found her hands were trembling.

  ‘Tighter,’ Jack insisted.

  She completed the final fastening. Jack was pinned into the cage. His hands were free, but he could not reach the straps that bound him around the neck, shoulder, and upper arms. He could move his head just enough to peer down his nose at his watch. ‘Running out of time,’ he told her. ‘Listen, Gwen. If this doesn’t work, you’ll have to explain to the others.’

  Gwen reached out to him. Placed her palm softly against his cheek.

  He twisted his head as though her hand had burned him. ‘Knock it off,’ he snarled. ‘Stay focused. Do not — I repeat do not — change the plan. You do exactly as we agreed. Understand?’

  She nodded mutely.

  ‘Say it!’ he snapped. ‘Understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You must not let me change this plan,’ he urged. ‘No matter how much I may threaten you. No matter how much I plead with you or beg you.’ Gwen could hardly bear to meet the blue intensity of his gaze. ‘All right,’ Jack said. ‘Hit the button.’

  Gwen reached behind the cage and activated the control Jack had shown her.

  The cage quivered into life around him. With a brief cough, the mechanism punched a Bruydac device through the skin of his back and into his spine.

  Jack bellowed in surprise, a roar that seemed to fill the whole cavernous room and that Gwen thought would never end. Eventually, Jack reverted to a series of anguished gasps.

  ‘Not what I expected,’ he told her, and slipped into unconsciousness.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Toshiko sat alone at her computer terminal in the main Hub area. Her desk was stacked high with half-repaired components, scribbled notes and an assortment of pens, half of which didn’t work. Flat-panel screens flickered in front of her eyes, displaying the latest results of her search around the Hub for Owen’s life signs.

  At first, she’d worried about being too obviously exposed in the centre of the area. She reassured herself that Owen was not armed when he fled from the medical suite, and that she had now securely locked the armoury. He might be able to spot her by looking down from the gantry by the Boardroom, or from beside the cog-shaped entrance where the lift delivered people from the upper floors. But he would not be able to pick her off from either place. The idea was that it appeared she would have enough time to make a run for it if and when she heard his footsteps on the metal gantry, or detected the noise of the door opening behind her.

  She was still in a state of some anxiety, though. That much was evident when the Tannoy system sounded, and she simply leaped out of her seat and practically whirled on the spot in panic as she realised that she had no idea where she was going to run. Her breathing was shallow, ragged, panicked. It felt like her heart was battering her ribcage.

  ‘You’re very difficult to reach,’ said Gwen’s voice over the Tannoy.

  ‘That’s the idea,’ said Toshiko. ‘Oh God, Gwen, you scared me to death.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Gwen said. ‘I’m using some comms device that Jack brought along. He connected it to the Torchwood PA system. Just as well, because your mobile’s still switched off.’

  There was a clattering noise from the gallery. Toshiko looked up, momentarily distracted. Nothing to see.

  ‘No sign of Owen yet,’ she told Gwen. ‘I think he may have gone to ground.’

  ‘Thank God,’ replied Gwen. ‘Things seem to have gone completely tits-up here. We’ve managed to stop the ship coming through the Rift-’

  ‘Well, that’s great news!’

  ‘-but Jack’s got himself trapped in that place we found Owen. The place where he got that thing stuck in him. Oh, Tosh…’

  Toshiko was torn between comforting Gwen and warning her. ‘You have to be careful, Gwen. You’re broadcasting on an open channel. Whatever I can hear, Owen can hear too.’

  ‘I don’t care!’ There was a sob in Gwen’s voice. She was starting to lose it, thought Toshiko. Her hand hovered over the disconnect button. ‘Tosh, he’s trapped in the machinery. It’s all gone so horribly wrong. He’s had one of those control devices injected into him. What am I gonna do?’

  Toshiko didn’t have time to answer. There was a clattering, clanking sound from the gallery beside the coffee machine. There was a blur of motion. The looped chain by the railing rattled and swayed. Owen had slid down it, and was plunging through the raised level of water in the basin, unstoppable, desperate to reach her. In his hand was an evil-looking surgical instrument. He made the near side of the basin before she had time to turn and flee.

  He was right beside her.

  She knew that surgical instrument from seeing Owen conduct autopsies. It was the hook-ended hammer that he used to prise the cap from the top of a severed skull. He’d joked about it being the inspiration for the Beatles’ song ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ that came down upon your head and made sure that you were dead. That gave her some clue about his immediate intentions.

  She spun on her heel, ready to run.

  Owen plunged forward, the hammer raised. He was on her. She could not escape.

  The hammer came down onto her head.

  Through her head.

  Onto Toshiko’s desk.

  Two of the flat-panel screens burst into a bright shower of sparks and glass and shards of plastic. Owen recoiled from the explosion, and fell onto his back on the metal grating beside his own desk.

  Within seconds, Ianto was on him, water spraying all around the area. Owen’s eyes stretched wide, unbelieving, furious. Ianto took full advantage of his disorientation, and smashed him hard across the face with the back of his hand. Owen was no match for the bigger man, and Ianto was able to twist the hammer from his grasp and cast it aside. It bounced off under the nearby desk with the chime of metal on metal.

  Ianto sat on Owen’s chest, pinning him to the floor. He plucked a syringe from his pocket and, one-handed, popped the protective cap off the needle before plunging it into Owen.

  Over by her desk, Toshiko flickered and faded and vanished. Owen saw this, and his head slumped against the floor in frustration. ‘Second Reality,’ he spat in disgust. ‘Oh, very good, Tosh.’ His tired eyes looked at Ianto, who was still pressing down on his chest. ‘D’you mind getting off, mate. You’re getting me all wet here.’

  It was weird, decided Toshiko, to see yourself interacting with other people. The whole thing was quite different to seeing yourself on video, because you got the complete picture of the surroundings as it happened. Seeing the back of her own head made her want to get her hair cut as soon as possible. And did she really have that little bounce in her gait? Why had no one mentioned it before?

  She had watched the whole sequence from her vantage point in the Boardroom on the first floor. She’d crouched there in the dark, waiting for Owen to locate the image of herself that she’d projected at her desk. There had been one nervous moment when Owen had made his way through the Boardroom and onto the balcony by the coffee machine, but he had been too fixated on the fake Toshiko at her desk below to notice the real thing lurking under the conference table, petrified and holding her breath.

  Once Owen had committed himself to the attack, and fallen through the insubstantial image of Toshiko, Ianto had leaped up from his hiding place and injected the powerful sedative into him.

  ‘Bit of an awkward moment there,’ Ianto called across to Toshiko as she came down the gantry steps to join him. ‘He almost trod on me in the basin as he charged through. Splashed water down my snorkel. Thought I was going to choke to death for a moment.’

  Toshiko was beside him now. ‘Nice work, Ianto.’

  ‘You clever girl,’ Owen slurred at her from beneath Ianto. ‘Using the Second Reality software to make me think that was you.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she told him.

  Owen grinned a wide, lazy grin. ‘Don’t be too pleased with your
self, Tosh. I heard that call from Gwen.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  His eyes flickered on the edge of unconsciousness. ‘I have another life left. Back in… back in my ship. Your friend Jack…’ Owen swallowed hard, took a deep breath, exhaled it. ‘Got a feeling he’s going to be… the most useful of all.’ He summoned up the strength to wink at Ianto. One last smile for Toshiko. ‘See you again. Soon.’

  After she’d contacted Toshiko, Gwen sat quietly in the cavernous room with her back to the central cylinder. The churning, lurching movements of the alien vessel had begun to subside now, and the flicker of green lights in the unseen ceiling was settling into a regular, uninterrupted illumination of the area around her.

  She studied Jack from a distance. His breathing was regular, but he remained deeply unconscious. Gwen mentally rehearsed the sequence of events that Jack had explained earlier. But now he was trapped in the cage, nothing seemed clear any more. Everything seemed wrong, impossible.

  Jack took a sudden, shuddering breath, like a man surfacing from water and gratefully gulping at the air. His eyes widened, accustomed themselves to the light. Focused on Gwen. ‘Hey,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I was beginning to think things weren’t working out.’

  Gwen forced herself up from the floor. Turned her back on him. Began to operate the panels that sprouted from the top of the control cylinder, just the way Jack had shown her. The urge was to rely on what she knew from Earth technology — to feel the reassuring click of a light switch or hear the firm clunk that a car door makes that tells you it’s closed. Her short training session at these controls with Jack earlier had made her nervous and frustrated. It was more a mental contact than a physical one. She began to doubt that she’d manipulated them correctly, until she heard the sound of running water in the distance.

  She panicked for a moment, realising that her scuba gear was a long way from her down the corridors. Until she saw Jack’s mask and diving cylinder on the floor. She snatched it up, and tried to remain calm as she slipped the harness on her back, strapped it across her midriff, fitted the mask over her eyes and nose.

  The water began to gush into the chamber. It swilled across the floor, and swirled against the central cylinder and around her feet. In his cage, still clear of the incoming water, Jack’s eyes registered his alarm.

  ‘OK.’ He had raised his voice to make himself heard over the sound of the water. ‘You can let me outta here now, Gwen.’

  She continued to check that her scuba set was working.

  ‘Gwen? Gwen!’

  The cylinder was half-full, and open. The air-hoses were securely attached and not kinked.

  ‘C’mon Gwen. You can let me out now.’

  She adjusted her mask, getting it comfortable. Not time yet to put the mouthpiece in.

  The cramped cage couldn’t be comfortable for Jack, but he was showing her his biggest, cheesiest, most reassuring grin. ‘Tosh did it, y’know. She trapped Owen. He’s locked in the cells. Right next to the Weevil, imagine that! So it’s OK to undo these straps now, Gwen. We did it! We can get outta here!’

  ‘You mean, I can get out of here,’ she told him.

  No, that was a mistake. Jack had told her not to talk to him. Not to get drawn into a conversation. She bit her bottom lip in frustration and annoyance. Jack saw it. Knew he was getting through. The incoming water was splashing up against the bottom of the cages now. Gwen leaned back against the cylinder and looked at Jack. She thought she saw a calculating glance, a transitory look that was gone almost as soon as she spotted it.

  He winked at her. ‘Time to go, Gwen. Place is flooding.’

  ‘You warned me not to listen to you.’

  ‘That was then, and this is now.’ A note of studied exasperation in his voice. ‘You said it yourself, my plan’s gone so horribly wrong. Completely tits-up.’ He could evidently see from her reaction that what he’d said had surprised her.

  ‘How very interesting, Jack. Now, how would you know I’d said that?’ His eagerness was evolving into worry, and then anger, as she continued to speak. ‘Because you were unconscious when I called Tosh. So either you were faking it, which wouldn’t be good. Or you heard it when you were possessing Owen. Which would be even worse.’

  ‘Please, Gwen. This really isn’t what I planned.’ The level had reached his waist now. He wriggled impotently as the cold grey water lapped around him in the cage. ‘Please Gwen. I’m begging you.’

  ‘Pleading?’ she asked him. ‘That’s so not Jack.’

  ‘God dammit!’ he flared, shaking the cage as he struggled against his restraints. ‘That is me now! Up to my ass in seawater, you think I’m gonna reason with you, Police Constable Cooper? Think I’m gonna conduct a debate with you? Observe the niceties of reasoned argument? Get me the hell outta here!’

  The water had reached her chest now. No more time to talk with Jack. Gwen inserted the mouthpiece. She ensured that there was a watertight seal between the breathing set and her lips.

  Water slopped around her face and ears. She could hear her own breathing as she tried to inhale through her mouth regularly, calmly. Still she watched Jack in the cage as the churning seawater eddied around him, splashing in his face, making him splutter. He was shouting at her still, his bound hands thrashing and scratching at the bars in a futile effort to release them.

  Jack wailed and pleaded and screamed at her. The last thing she could hear before the water rose over her ears were his threats.

  ‘If you don’t release these clasps for me, I will get outta here once the water has short-circuited the system. And then I am gonna bust your ass. You will regret this, lady. I will make you regret this…’

  The water continued to rise over her face mask.

  You’re unable to keep your temper. The anger and desolation and anguish consume you. It’s not like the hunger this time, not the exquisite agony of physical want. It’s the knowledge that you are no longer in control. Not of your body. Not of the elements. Not of the woman who has trapped you here to face this alone.

  The sea has reached your chin now. It’s cold and dark and there is no comfort for you in its chill embrace. With your mouth clamped shut, you can just angle your head a little higher, keeping your nose and eyes above the water. Staring at the top of the cage. The last thing you expected to see, and the last thing you will see.

  You consider what’s inside yourself now. What there will be next. And it is so dark and lonely and empty. You knew that Sandra Applegate believed in everlasting life and a better place to go. Guy Wildman’s unreasoned agnosticism allowed for something beyond death. But when you explore your heart now, there is nothing inside you. Nothing. Blankness, blackness.

  Close your eyes now. How long can you hold your breath?

  Your lungs burn. They ache for air. Every fibre of your being is telling you to open your mouth and your eyes.

  You so want somewhere to go from here, but you don’t remotely believe there is anywhere left. You are not Bee or Wildman or Tegg. You are not like them. You know there is nothing more.

  You are-

  Jack’s face was underwater now, angled up to the last pocket of air in the cage. With her head underwater too, everything seemed closer to Gwen. Images were magnified, even in the greyish sea water. The sound of her own breathing, the noise of exhaled air, was loud and close.

  She wasn’t sure she could bear to watch this, but knew somehow she wouldn’t look away. Think of how he had killed the Bruydac Warrior. He had told her that she should imagine him as that man, who showed no mercy to a defeated enemy. He was someone who should suffer the same fate, if it came down to it. He should be allowed to die, helpless and alone.

  That wasn’t Jack in the cage any more, cajoling and begging and threatening. Thrashing at the restraints in fury and desperation. It was the Bruydac Warrior. So wasn’t she just doing the same thing that Jack did earlier?

  Didn’t that make her the same? Or, knowing that about herself, didn’t it make he
r worse?

  The bubbles from Jack’s upturned face slowed to a trickle and stopped. His eyelids opened. His mouth gaped abruptly as the breathing reflex overcame him. His chest convulsed as he sucked cold grey water into his lungs in a final, choking rush.

  Cold, grey seawater surrounded Gwen, so she couldn’t feel the hot salt tears on her face. She forced herself to watch Jack until his seizures subsided.

  Once he hadn’t moved for ten minutes, she knew for certain that Jack was dead.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The mesh grating tilted up and over and toppled with a clanging echo. Gwen emerged from beneath it, surging out of the water in the basin and sending waves slopping over the edges across the Hub floor. Through the mask, she could see that she had broken the surface. She tore it off and eagerly gasped down clean, fresh air. Or as fresh as it got in the Hub. Even the slightly damp atmosphere of the main level made her feel home and safe.

  Behind her, Jack’s body floated face down in the water of the Hub basin. She had released it from the bonds of the cage in the ship and desperately dragged it behind her through flooded corridors, along an open stretch of the Bay, and finally through the interlocking junctions of the Hub’s underwater entrance.

  She’d found Jack’s body a dead weight while it was in the water. Now she tried to drag it from the basin. It was more of a struggle than she had anticipated. Her body was telling her to stop, to rest. Gwen’s legs and arms throbbed with dull pain, and she had to fight for her breath.

  Eventually, she got her hands under his armpits and half-dragged him, half-fell with him onto the Hub floor.

  Jack’s body was supine on the chill metal of the walkway by the basin. His staring eyes were glassy, empty. His skin showed as a ghastly pale blue, his full lips were dark, and there were rings of black beneath his eyes.

  She slumped down on the grating beside him, and removed her diving cylinder. Sat watching him. Urging him.